Indian Polity Quiz: Civil Society and Social Audit | 18 June, 2021

In April 2017, Meghalaya became the first State in the country to pass social audit legislation, the Meghalaya Community Participation and Public Services Social Audit Act.

This Act mandated social audits across 21 schemes and 11 departments.

Source: The Hindu

Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), 2010

• Foreign funding of voluntary organizations in India is regulated under FCRA act which is implemented by the Ministry of Home Affairs.
• The Acts ensures that the recipients of foreign contributions adhere to the stated purpose for which such contribution has been obtained.
• Under the Act, organizations are required to register themselves every five years.

Source: The Hindu

NGOs are groups of ordinary citizens that are involved in a wide range of activities that may have charitable, social, political, religious or other interests.

• NGOs are helpful in implementing government schemes at the grassroots.
• In India, NGOs can be registered under a plethora of Acts such as the Indian Societies Registration Act, 1860, Religious Endowments Act, 1863, Indian Trusts Act, etc.

Source: Governance in India by Laxmikanth

The SHG Bank Linkage Project launched by NABARD in 1992 has blossomed into the world’s largest microfinance project.

NABARD along with RBI permitted SHGs to have a savings account in banks from the year of 1993. This action gave a considerable boost to the SHG movement and paved the way for the SHG-Bank linkage program.

Source: Governance in India by Laxmikanth

Kudumbashree was launched in Kerala in 1998 to wipe out absolute poverty through community action.

• It is the largest women empowering project in the country.
• It has three components i.e., microcredit, entrepreneurship and empowerment.
• It has three tier structure – neighborhood groups (SHG), area development society (15-20 SHGs) and Community development society (federation of all groups).
• Kudumbashree is a government agency that has a budget and staff paid by the government. The three tiers are also managed by unpaid volunteers.

Source: The Hindu

To deal with child sexual abuse cases, the Government has brought in a special law, namely, The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012. The Act has come into force with effect from 14th November, 2012 along with the Rules framed there under.

Provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act:

• The Act defines a child as any person below eighteen years of age and regards the best interests and well-being of the child as being of paramount importance at every stage, to ensure the healthy physical, emotional, intellectual and social development of the child.
• It defines different forms of sexual abuse, including penetrative and non-penetrative assault, as well as sexual harassment and pornography, and deems a sexual assault to be “aggravated” under certain circumstances, such as when the abused child is mentally ill or when the abuse is committed by a person in a position of trust or authority vis-à-vis the child, like a family member, police officer, teacher, or doctor

• It also seeks to establish Special Courts for speedy trial of such offences. The Act stipulates that a case of Child Sexual Abuse must be disposed of within one year from the date the offence is reported.
• It also provides for relief and rehabilitation of the child, as soon as the complaint is made. The Special Juvenile Police Unit or the local police are also required to report the matter to the Child Welfare Committee within 24 hours of recording the complaint, for long term rehabilitation of the child.
• It is gender neutral law, wherein the law takes cognizance of sexual crimes committed against both girls and boys under the age of 18 years.
• It does not recognize consensual sexual acts among children or between a child and an adult. Prosecutes any person (including a child) for engaging in a sexual act with a child irrespective of whether the latter consented to it.

Source: https://prsindia.org/billtrack/the-protection-of-children-from-sexual-offences-amendment-bill. 

A key component of e-governance is to provide governments with a citizen-friendly face. Naturally, G2C (government-to-citizens) is an important element of all e-governance projects.

• FirstGov in the US, e-Envoy of the UK, e-Taiwan, e-Citizen in Singapore, e-Korea, e-Malaysia, Victoria Online in Australia and Government Online in Canada are award-winning G2C services in the world.
• Closer home, e-Seva in Andhra Pradesh, Friends in Kerala, Sukhmani centres in Punjab, the Lok-Mitra project in Rajasthan, Coimbatore-Online in Tamil Nadu and BangaloreOne in Karnataka are some of the pioneering G2C initiatives in India.

Source: The Hindu

India’s richest 1% hold more than four-times the wealth held by 953 million people who make up for the bottom 70% of the country’s population, while the total wealth of all Indian billionaires is more than the full-year budget.

• Releasing the study Time to Care, ahead of the 50th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), rights group Oxfam also said the world’s 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60 per cent of the planet’s population.
• The report flagged that global inequality is shockingly entrenched and vast and the number of billionaires has doubled in the last decade, despite their combined wealth having declined in the last year.

Source: The Hindu

India’s MMR has declined from 130 per 1 lakh live births in 2014-2016 to 122 per 1 lakh live births in 2015-2017 as per the recently released Sample Registration System (SRS) 2015-2017 bulletin for MMR. A decline of 8 points (6.2%) has been observed.

• The bulletin categorizes the country into three groups: Empowered Action Group (EAG), Southern States and other states.

• The following states are coming under EAG are Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Rajasthan.

Source: The Hindu

As per the Constitutional provision under Article 244 (1) of the Constitution of India, the ‘Scheduled Areas’ are defined as ‘such areas as the President may by order declare to be Scheduled Areas’ – as per paragraph 6(1) of the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution of India.

The criteria for declaring any area as a “Scheduled Area” under the Fifth Schedule are:

• Preponderance of tribal population,
• Compactness and reasonable size of the area,
• A viable administrative entity such as a district, block or taluk, and
• Economic backwardness of the area as compared to the neighboring areas.

These criteria are not spelt out in the Constitution of India but have become well established. Accordingly, since the year 1950 to 2007 Constitutional Order relating to Scheduled Areas has been notified.

Source: Ministry of Tribal Welfare